Government Acts Against Those Scamming Seniors

Governments at all levels have been warning about frauds against seniors for years. On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that a group of agencies had been working together and was taking big action. It filed charges against more than 250 alleged perpetrators of financial frauds against seniors. The charges also described the scams used to separate seniors from their money.

The defendants allegedly harmed more than a million victims, most of whom were elderly, according to the Justice Department.

In one of the cases, the FTC and the state of Missouri filed charges against two men and their sweepstakes organization.

The FTC alleged that seniors would receive mailers claiming that they had just won more than $1 million or that they could win a large cash prize if they were to answer a question and submit a registration fee.

Since 2013, victims lost more than $110 million to this particular scheme, the FTC said.

In another elaborate fraud , the FTC and the state of Missouri pursued defendants who allegedly coordinated with telemarketers to hoodwink the elderly into buying phony tech support services.